SmartShopper

== "The board game that makes all of us smart shoppers!" Katie Oristian Palacios Khoa Lam

Instructional Objective
Learner is able to perform math operations that inform their shopping decisions.

Learners & Context of Use
Game is designed for 3rd and 4th grade math students, but it could be adapted for older level students as well. This game is especially useful for students who show a lack of motivation toward their math studies.

Competing Products
Grocery Grab: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec670/Cardboard/board/g/grocerygrab/grab.html Grocery Grab has a different instructional objectives, but the context is very similar.

**Object of the Game**
The object of the game is to be the player with the most coins saved when the first player reaches the end of the board.

Content Analysis
Link to SmartShopper content analysis.

Game Materials

 * Board: Predetermined amount of spaces. Conveyor belt image with images of aisles/shelves.
 * Pieces:
 * Player markers: Miniature representations of items commonly purchased, to be used to represent players on the board. These player markers include items such as: a candy bar, a carton of milk, an iPod, a baseball glove, a teddy bear.
 * Player savings: Each player collects coins representing their savings.
 * Each player has a small drawstring bag used to collect their coins.
 * Two dice for rolling to determine card difficulty (blue die) and chance card (red die).
 * Cards
 * Price Check Cards: These cards contain the math problems. On one side is the question/answer combination, and these are laying flat in three stacks (Easy, Medium, Difficult) face down on one side of the game board.
 * Shopping Spree Cards: These cards introduce chance into the game. A Shopping Spree card either increases the savings that a player has accumulated or takes savings away (pay an overdue fee at the library.

Time Required
Game play time runs approximately 40 minutes.

The Rules
List the rules as you would provide them to the players. Use a numbered list and keep the rules short, simple, and unambiguous. If there are multiple forms of the game for different objectives or different levels of challenge, separate the rules accordingly rather than merging them into one set.
 * 1) Players roll dice. The player who rolls the largest number goes first.
 * 2) Player 1 starts on the first square of the board and rolls the die. The player draws a "Price Check" card at the aisle with the number that was rolled. [1 and 2] Easy Aisle, [3 and 4] Medium Aisle, [5 and 6] Difficult Aisle. An opposing player reads the question to Player 1.
 * 3) If Player 1 gets the correct answer, he collects the corresponding number of coins and saves them in his drawstring bag. (1 coin for easy questions, 2 coins for medium questions, and 3 coins for difficult questions). Player 1 moves his game piece forward on the board, and it's Player 2's turn.
 * 4) If Player 1 doesn't get the correct answer, then no coins are collected. Player 1 moves his game piece forward on the board, and it's Player 2's turn.
 * 5) When a player reaches a "Shopping Spree" space on the board, the player draws a "Shopping Spree" card and follows the directions on the card. Turn continues with the next player.
 * 6) The first player to reach the end of the conveyor belt, receives the "Early Bird Special" and game play ends.
 * 7) All players count their savings, and the player with the most savings wins.

Motivational Issues

 * Fantasy: shopping on their own and making money decisions, "be"ing objects on a conveyor belt.
 * Challenge: easy-medium-difficult level cards
 * Control: each player chooses their own game piece.
 * Curiosity: the winner of the game remains unknown until the end, when players count up the savings that they've collected throughout the game.
 * Competition: players compete to answer math questions correctly and to earn more savings than their opponent.
 * Cooperation: Interaction with the other player(s), reading/answering questions.
 * Recognition: Receiving savings "tokens" for answering, recognizing the decisions that they've made.


 * Attention: game piece and conveyor belt setup make players want to "jump on" the conveyor belt and start the game.
 * Relevance: use products that they would normally be buying/wanting in a store
 * Confidence: answering correctly gives them more value (savings).
 * Satisfaction: Seeing/holding/visualizing the result of using math in their shopping decisions. (The tokens in their savings bag.)
 * Flow: the right level of math question, keeping them interested and getting them to "forget" the math/educational -ness of the game.

Design Process
Describe the process you went through in putting the game together. What were your first thoughts? How did you enhance your ideas? What ideas did you consider and reject (and why?). How did you gather background information? What did you do to see if there are similar games out there? What did you do to get feedback on the idea? How did you flesh out the game to the point of having a playable prototype? How did you gather feedback from that? What lessons did you learn from this that you'll carry to your next game design project?

Ideas considered and rejected: -Race game: rejected because the objective of being a smart shopper is to have the most money saved and not finish first. -A longer board game path: rejected because that would work better with a race game - Having game play end when "big pile of savings" runs out. - Having game play end when all players reach the end of the board. - Having game play end after a certain amount of time. -